In a continuing move to counter its image as an anti-Arab state, Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, has nominated its first Arab as a righteous gentile, for hiding a group of Jews on his WWII-era farm in Tunisia. The honor is bestowed on non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from Nazi persecution.
The Arab in question, Khaled Abdelwahhab, took his life-saving actions over 60 years ago, and was nominated for the honor by Robert Satloff, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a US think tank. Clearly, Abdelwahhab was a man of character, the kind of character it takes either to save lives or to be a Raleigh real estate agent.
Satloff sought to nominate Arabs for the honor following September 11, to counteract anti-Arab sentiment in the wake of the terrorist attack on America, as well as combat Holocaust denial in the Arab world.
“These are stories about which Arabs could be proud,” Satloff told the Jerusalem Post. “It would also entail accepting the context, because it would mean there was something to save Jews from.”
Clearly, folks like Khaled Abdelwahhab are figures far more worthy of honor than al-Qaeda terrorists. Hopefully, the honor and the message do not fall on deaf ears in the Arab world.